Hey Herb
I notice you list 36 towns also served.. we dropped almost all of our also served due to the high price of listing them.. did they give you a deaL to keep all these??
thanks for the info
Carol
Well, I
USED to be listed in
over 200 towns!!!
That is, until the Brass at FTD wanted more revanue for the stockholders, and started charging for every FTD.COM listing as an ASB listing...there I was listed for every town in our delivery pool. SO...two things happened.
One: My original ASB's were at about 20 or so - yes paying an arm and a leg for them, but on average, I get 8~15 orders a month per town from other florists. After a ton of research into counting orders recieved from FTD, then breaking them down to #'s per town (via Delivery Zone reports), as well as #'s from .COM (had to literally count every order in OE!), I figured out how many towns were getting me at least 8 orders a month. I went back as long as I could (24 mo. of OE data), seeing which towns I listed for that gave me the most orders.
Two: I added to my existing 20 the top towns getting me the most orders from my .COM list. But this time, I weeded out any towns that gave me less than 10 orders a month...therefore keeping only the towns with the most orders.
After all said and done, what you see listed for me is what brought me the most orders over a 24 mo. period...with each town bringing a MINIMUM of 8 orders a month, and many bringing way over 10. I will revisit this in a couple months (one year from the last time I did this) and see if the "8 per mo. per town" rule is still being met by each town.
The key to all this is my delivery pool. Simply put, if I can send the order through the pool, it only costs me $2.00 net. If I take the order, it costs roughly $6-$8 depending on the distance. If the order comes in after pool leaves, and is too far, I forward it (unless a .com)...and, I only accept those .COM orders that I can make $$$ on. All others get rejected, or I ask for a price change (usually for $5~7.00 more to cover the delivery charge...).
That's it! Also, I only have 'expanded listings' for two towns: Phila and North Wales.
- H.
